Conventionally, there exist load distributed printing systems which distribute a printing load to a plurality of inexpensive medium-speed printing apparatuses and cause them to operate in parallel to implement high-speed printing at a low cost instead of executing mass printing by using one high-speed mass printing apparatus when it is necessary to print documents in a large quantity.
When a plurality of printing apparatuses are operated in parallel, the load concentrates at a specific printing apparatus. To solve this problem, various techniques to efficiently use a plurality of printing apparatuses have been proposed (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 06-259206).
In a conventional print system represented by patent reference 1, however, identical print data are redundantly registered in a plurality of print queues. The print data registered in a print queue corresponding to a printing apparatus which is set first in the printable state is used while the print data registered in the remaining print queues are deleted. When identical print data are redundantly registered, the resource load for the memory capacity or arithmetic processing is large. In addition, a plurality of identical print data occupy the print queues, although it only temporarily occurs. Since many print jobs are registered in the queues as a whole, print job scheduling is difficult. Furthermore, when the state of print queues is presented to the user, it looks as if the print queues were very congested more than the reality, and the user is confused.